Last day in Rome

While we were at the hotel for our last night Frank found a magazine that had an article about the most photographed places in Rome. Of course we expected to see Trevi Fountain, Pantheon, Colosseum, Spanish Steps, Forum, Piazza Navona. We had seen and photographed all of those. But, among the most photographed was also Piazza de Popolo. What was that??? It gave us our final outing in Rome. It was very grey and rainy but there were lots of churches in the area to duck into and since I had wanted to see more churches this was perfect. (Frank did remind me not to force too many churches on the children since he has heard many times the stories of Wowa dragging us all around the missions in San Antonio when we were kids.)

The centerpiece of Piazza de Popolo is this Egyptian obelisk (alot of these in Rome-apparently they were fascinated by Egyptian art.) We are those tiny people on the bottom right:

Here's a view from the park above the piazza:

We stopped for one more serving of suppli before we could get no more. I decided we neede a photo of this treat. (We also had one more serving of gelatto!)


And while making our way to the train to head back to the hotel we came across this Chevron manhole next to a street-side gas station. Chevron sold all its business there long ago and this had obviously been an old station of theirs.

Couldn't have asked for a better trip. Certainly have to give a posting in Almaty points for providing us the opportunity (and the finances) to see this part of the world. Next stop - Spring Break 2011 - Israel!